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BL Premium reports that a recent case at the Labour Appeal Court (LAC) involving PailPrint dealt with the issue of prevention of strike violence.
The company has a clear disciplinary code that makes the "brandishing or wielding of dangerous weapons" a dismissible offence. In 2014, when a strike was about to begin, PailPrint posted a "picketing policy" on its notice boards and gates. Numsa had signed the policy document, which said that "no weapons of any kind are to be carried or wielded by the picketers". When the strike began, five workers on the picket line appeared to be in breach of the policy in that three carried just sticks, one carried a length of PVC piping, and another carried a sjambok as well as a stick. Among those in the crowd, someone had a golf club and another an axe. Five employees were dismissed following hearings for having "brandished or wielded" dangerous weapons during the strike. At the CCMA hearing the arbitrator found the dismissed workers had not been shown to have "brandished or wielded weapons". The employees’ dismissal was declared substantively unfair, and they were reinstated with a final written warning. But at the LAC, acting appeal court judge Kate Savage noted that the employees were aware of the picketing rule that barred them from carrying or wielding weapons and there was also no dispute that some had carried weapons in the form of sticks, etc. Likewise, she said there was no dispute that the rule was both valid and reasonable, and that its purpose was clear — especially given evidence of violent attacks on other employees during the strike. The arbitrator should have considered the purpose of the rule and the harm it sought to avoid, she said. She added that the constitutionally protected right to strike did not include the right to carry dangerous weapons that exposed others to a real risk of injury, and that also threatened and intimidated. Finding the dismissals "substantively fair", Savage awarded costs against the union.
Read the full original of Carmel Rickard’s report on the LAC ruling at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page